If you've been using the January Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Expression Interactive Designer (EID) and you've been waiting for the March CTP that we mentioned in a previous post [1] then you'll be glad to hear that your wait is over!

We're pleased to present the March 2006 CTP of EID that targets the February 2006 CTP of Microsoft WinFX Runtime Components (RTC). We have had an opportunity to make incremental improvements to various features of the product as well as to incorporate some of your feedback.

Just a quick post to let you know 5 new training videos are now available for viewing and download at http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/demos.mspx. Simply click the Interactive Designer tab near the bottom of the page, and then click one of the video links under Training Videos.

This will be of interest to those of you with an investment in Windows Forms. Originally, Microsoft had planned to ship this functionality in the Visual Studio "Orcas" timeframe. However, customers have asked us to release it earlier so that's exactly what we'll be doing now: providing this functionality in the WinFX v1 release itself. This will empower customers to leverage their existing Windows Forms code base (hosting WPF controls in WinForms and vice-versa), and to embrace WPF incrementally without ripping-and-replacing. Mike Henderlight has more details in his blog post [1] and on MSDN TV [2].

On his blog Instrucciones Para Mirar [1], Miguetelo has published some beautiful artwork which he created with Expression Graphic Designer [2]. The pieces created with EGD are Corvo [3] and Corvo 2 [4]. I'm sure you'll be aware that corvo is Spanish for crow (or raven). We hope you enjoy looking at Miguetelo's art as much as the Expression team has.

ZAM 3D fits into the designer-side workflow by complementing Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer. The idea is that a designer uses ZAM 3D to easily create 3D interface elements, models, controls, styles or layouts. Then the designer exports the 3D assets to XAML markup with a single click without any need to write, or even understand, the complex markup that goes into building a WPF 3D scene. Now the 3D assets are easily added to an Expression Interactive Designer project using the Project > Add Item... command.

Dante Gagne, a Software Design Engineer in Test in the Expression Interactive Designer team, has published a blog entry demonstrating how to write a ValueConverter (a great utility for data binding) and he also explains how to use it in Expression Interactive Designer.